Archive for ‘July, 2016’

Through his many fascinating and compelling documentaries, Louis Theroux has made the off-beat, the unsavoury and the less-visited aspects of life his own domain. Through his unique intimate, un-confrontational interviewing style, Louis is able to present intense and surprisingly revealing portraits of the most disparate of subjects.

The inimitable Louis Theroux returns for this collection of documentaries that uncover the shocking truth about some of today's most controversial issues.

Little by little, normality returns to a small French town after World War II. The town is as scarred by the petty recriminations between its inhabitants as by the very evident signs of bombings. Dr Archambaud shares his apartment with those whose own homes were destroyed in the bombing - the idealistic schoolteacher Watrin, who sees nothing bad in human nature, and Gaigneux, a militant Communist. With his school in ruins, Watrin is forced to give his lessons in a cafe owned by the alcoholic Leopold, who discovers an ardent passion for poetry. Abused by Leopold, Rochard, a Communist railway worker, resolves to have his revenge. He gets his chance when he learns that someone in the town is sheltering a former collaborator, Maxime Loin. Rochard denounces Leopold to the police, who waste no time throwing him in jail. In fact Loin is in the care of Dr Archambaud, who fears the consequences for his family if ever the police should learn the truth...

The first image of Abbas Kiarostami’s 2001 documentary, ABC Africa, reveals a fax from a United Nations agency inviting the Iranian filmmaker to make a film about Uganda’s AIDS orphans.
Out of a population of 22 million, Uganda has lost more than 2 million to the AIDS pandemic, with another 2 million infected with the virus. Consequently, as the film points out, the country is home to more than 1.6 million orphans. Kiarostami focuses on some of these children who are, in turn, fascinated by the camera. They jump around and clown for the filmmakers, but, in many faces, the painful realities are suggested in their eyes.
The children’s raw enthusiasm is balanced by the tragic stories told by the adults who must care for the orphans. The foster caretakers are overwhelmingly surviving widows and grandmothers. One elderly woman describes her personal situation in which 35 children live with her in a single-room house.

Brock Peters plays an African-American Union soldier who returns home after fighting in the Civil War and finding himself targeted by racists and thugs led by one-armed former Confederate officer Jack Palance and his sadistic henchman L.Q. Jones. Burl Ives plays Peters’ former slave master, a genial and dignified man who is more than happy to allow the ‘free man’ (more a friend or son than slave or employee) to have half of his land. Unfortunately, getting hands to tend to that land proves difficult, with only a few Indians (including David Carradine) willing to work for a black man. This angers the rabble-rousing racists even more, leading to violent trouble...

Taste of Cherry:
A day in the life of Badii (Homayoun Ershadi), an affluent middle aged Iranian who has lost the will to live. He seeks help from several people to commit suicide, but all refuse...

"Taste of Cherry" is a mythic tale told in the simplest terms but containing a complicated concept of suicide possibly alien to both eastern and western cultures. A desperate man bent on committing suicide attempts to enlist the help of someone to make sure he is buried, dead and not alive. Can he find a compassionate man to do him such an unusual favor in exchange for a large monetary reward? A simple idea, almost an Aesopian tale, but one that branches off into complex dimensions and sub-themes relating to the human condition, the legitimacy of the act of suicide, and many other meanings.

In 10 on Ten, Kiarostami revisits his triumphant 2002 drama Ten and lectures on his cinematic method. Following the same template, he navigates around Tehran in his car and discusses various aspects of filmmaking during the 10 segments. While informative and absorbing, the film requires viewers’ prior knowledge of Ten.

Poetic short film filled with poetry by master filmmaker and photographer Kiarostami about one of his favourite subjects: roads.

In this short experimental film, which Kiarostami made en passant as it were, it looks as if the master wanted to take a philosophical break, in order to catch his breath. He has put together the elements from his own culture that he admires: photography, poetry, classical music and film. Leitmotif is the road, in a literal and metaphorical sense.

Based on the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy.
"Resurrection" tells the story of Nekhlyudov, a wealthy aristocrat (like most Russian aristocrats, his wealth is inherited), in his quest to fix the evil he did to Katyusha, and understand all the rights and wrongs of life.
When Prince Nekhlyudov serves on a jury at the trial of a prostitute arrested for murder, he is horrified to discover that the accused is a woman he had once seduced and abandoned. Nekhlyudov goes to visit her in prison, meets other prisoners, hears their stories, and slowly comes to realize that all around his charmed and golden aristocratic world, yet invisible to it, is a much larger world of oppression, misery and barbarism. His guilt at the central role he played in her ruin soon leads him on a quest for forgiveness as he follows her into the prisons of Siberia.

The plot concerns a group of high school kids desperate to lose their virginity. When one of them comes across a sex ad online, the trio set up an appointment to meet a woman for an “all holes filled” night, but after downing a few beers upon arrival, they find themselves drugged and held captive by pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) and his Five Points church members. Abin is a bit like the infamous Fred Phelps, the bastard pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for incendiary hate speech and protesting the funerals of gays, military soldiers and some celebrities. The only difference here is that Cooper is even more extreme. His group makes a routine out of luring unsuspecting homosexuals and sexual deviants to their grounds for a brutal method of disposal. The boys soon find themselves in this wicked predicament until an escape attempt draws the unwanted attention of the local law enforcement...

The film is about Amarnath (Dilip Kumar), a noted criminal lawyer who is opposed to any moral transgression in public life. In love with a scholarly activist Anjoo (Madhubala), Amar's life is torn apart when his milkmaid Sonia (Nimmi), who too pines for Amar, enters his house on a stormy night while trying to escape an infatuated criminal Sankat (Jayant). Sonia's blooming youth and fragility ignite lust in Amar and he inflicts himself upon her. Though raped by her idol, Sonia seals her mouth about the crime until an accident reveals her carrying a child.
Meanwhile, Amar struggles with his conscience but cannot disclose the truth until one day, Sankat attacks Amar and the ensuing struggle leads to Sankat's death. Though Sonia is accused of murder as she is found next to the body, she takes the blame so as to protect Amar from harm...

"The Last Temptation of Christ" was a project that filmmaker Martin Scorsese had wanted to make for years, a passion project. A Catholic, Scorsese had wanted to make a film about the life of Jesus since childhood, having watched the Hollywood religious epics and being inspired by them. He would give up a life in the priesthood to become a filmmaker. Having optioned the book of the same name by author Nikos Kazantzakis in 1970, it would be 18 years before his vision could be seen on the big screen, and it caused quite a stir among the Christian population that protested the film and called it a work of blasphemy.
"The Last Temptation of Christ" is a film which depicts the life of Jesus Christ (Willem Dafoe) as he meets his ultimate end. The Story of Christ is undoubtedly the most well known story of all time, however this story explores the life of the Savior in a more personal and human manner. His struggles with temptation take a front seat in Scorsese's opus as he deals with forms of fear, doubt, depression, reluctance and lust.
This film is not like the usual religious epics we've previously seen from Hollywood, the types that romanticize the era and portray the figures as pillars for morality throughout their struggles, matched with immaculate costumes and lush scope photography. No. "The Last Temptation of Christ" is humanistic in character, smaller and a much more personal film.